Sugar Plums and the Sugar Plum Fairy make many appearances in Christmas literature and folklore, but what the heck is a sugarplum?! We turned to the imagination and talent of Yasmina Jacobs’ of EatMakeCelebrate to create a sugar plum fairy dessert. She created a Sugar Plum Fairy Puff – a puff pastry (AKA a choux), filled with vanilla plum cream, covered in bright colored icing and edible glitter. Choux are an Impatient Foodie’s dessert dream – they look really fancy and are easy to make with very few ingredients (check out the recipe for details). Our accompanying hot chocolate comes is made with a pinch of cayenne pepper – a nice, spicy little kick to help warm you from the inside.

FOR THE GLAZE1 CUP CONFECTIONER’S SUGAR
2 TABLESPOONS OF MILK
FOOD COLORING OF YOUR CHOICE
STIR TOGETHER THE SUGAR AND MILK.

Instructions

CHOUX PASTRY

Preheat oven to 375F and prep all your ingredients

In a medium saucepan, heat 1 cup of water with the butter, sugar, and salt.

As soon as the butter is melted and the water is simmering take the pan off the heat and add in all the flour. Stir constantly – the mixture will start to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Place the pan back on the heat and stir for another minute or so.

Let the mixture cool for about 5 minutes.

Add in the eggs one at a time stirring in between each egg. The final batter should be thick and glossy.

Transfer to a pastry bag fitted with a plain round tip, or just place it into a food storage bag with the end cut off.

Pipe 1 inch and 2 inch rounds onto parchment paper.

Bake at 375F for 25-30 minutes.

PASTRY CREAM

Heat the milk and vanilla bean in a large saucepan.

In a bowl whisk together the flour, sugar, yolks, and eggs.

Once the milk is simmering, add a small amount of the milk mixture into the bowl with the flour and sugar and eggs. Stir continuously and then pour the contents of the bowl back into the pan.

Keep stirring for another 2-3 minutes until the mixture thickens. Take it off the heat and allow it to cool.

Mix about 1 cup of the vanilla pastry cream with ½ cup of jam.

TO ASSEMBLE:

Pipe the vanilla pastry cream into the bottom choux pastry (the larger sized choux) using a pastry bag and a small round pastry tip. Just apply a little pressure to the pastry bag and stop when you feel the pastry is full.

Pipe the plum vanilla cream into the top choux pastry (the smaller sized one) in the same way.

Dip the larger choux into the glaze, dip the smaller choux into the glaze and stack them.

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About Elettra

Elettra Wiedemann is the founder of Impatient Foodie, a food site that navigates her desire to marry Slow Food ideals with the realities of fast paced, urban life. Within just a few months of launch in summer of 2014, Impatient Foodie was featured in numerous publications including Vogue, The New York Post, The Daily Mail (UK) Elle US, Elle China, Yahoo Food, Yahoo News, Madame Figaro, and Racked, ManRepeller, and Food & Wine Magazine.